The vegetable garden (to be)

This photo looks west from the laneway across the vegetable garden to the farm beyond.  

You can see a mainly empty garden here (and my 'tidy gene' on display), but also some signs of how things will be.  How I wish my dear Mum could see it - and share in the excitement of planning and then seeing through a project like this.  'Stickability' was what she thought people needed and gardening was one passionate expression of her own stickability.

In the foreground is a part of the cypress hedge that will surround the garden on 3 sides and protect me from the cold south westerly winds.  If you double click on the photo for a bigger view, you can actually see some of the trees from the western side just the other side of the cultivated area.  The hedge has only been in the ground for about 18 months - so the growth is pretty good.  It's amazing what good watering will do.

The shed in the middle of the photo is the old garage from up by the house.  A year ago we pulled it down and relocated it.  At the moment it has furniture from the house in it, but in time, it will be vegetable HQ.  Already I can sit on the bench by the door and contemplate ...

To the left of and behind the shed is the asparagus patch.  One hundred asparagus plants went in there last winter.  Barbara Kingsolver, in her wonderful book Animal Vegetable Miracle, talked about the asparagus patches she had established in gardens she was soon to leave "for no better reason than that I believe in vegetables in general, and this one in particular".  I too believe in asparagus - and know that the multi year wait to first harvest will soon pass.

To the right is the compost heap.  I built my first compost bin at the age of 21.  I've never been particularly fastidious about compost recipes - I've found patience a reasonable substitute for diligence in this regard.  Perhaps in future I'll do better, get my carbon, nitrogen and moisture right and produce compost in months rather than years.  Certainly I like the design of this heap.  Star pickets supporting a mesh wall.  In time I want to have a separate compost yard - and do it all on a much bigger scale for the garden and the farm.  But that's in the future.

To the right of the compost heap are some garden plants - transplanted while the building extension is completed.  And also son Neil's little garden.  I hope his girlfriend Lily will be impressed when she returns from Guangzhou in a few weeks.